Veselin 'Noiselessx' is an esports expert, mostly focusing on Dota 2, where he has achieved 5800 MMR. Having more than 12 years of Dota 2 experience and playing on multiple tier 2 & 3 teams, he has the needed knowledge to analyze details. His work has been featured on many esports websites. Twitter & Twitch @NoiselesS123

The Dota Underlords September5th Update makes a few small changes to Dota Underlords.

General Changes

There are a couple of general changes in the new update. First, the uncap Proto-Pass XP has level 99 cap. There are various animations and FX improvements, as well as a visual upgrade for the two and three-star Alchemist, Bloodseekr, Crystal Maiden, Sand King, and Tusk.

In terms of mobile changes, Valve added a new framerate option that allows players to select different FPS setting in order to save some battery, which is pretty cool.

Another change is that the Melee units can now target barricades if there are no better targets available. Lastly, the Assassin and Blink Dagger targeting are now more random between left and right when selecting the farthest target.

Hero Changes

Arc Warden’s Tempest Double now has a 3 seconds cooldown on creating another clone whenever a clone dies. As many people expected, Valve was going to nerf this at some point, so better late than never.

Sand King’s Caustic Finale bug is also fixed. Previously, the spell used to do damage on the timer-expire damage rather than on-death damage.

Tidehunter’s Ravage now applies its damage after the stun is applied. This is pretty awesome because the Shaman Ace Effect will be able to finally interact properly.

The last hero to receive a change is Tiny. Now, he can Toss his Target Buddy.

A Dying Game?

As most know, Dota Underlords is still in its early access. This means that there are constant updates going on. In fact, just a couple of days ago, the devs released a pretty big one which included a lot of changes and even introduced new types of items. However, despite the constant changes, the player base of the game is slowly fading away.

During the first days after it’s release, the game had over 200K concurrent players. Nowadays though, the situation is very different. As an example, just in August alone, Dota Underlords has lost over 21K players. The average concurrent players’ number is around 70K, which is big difference compared to when it first launched.

There are many reasons why this is an ongoing trend. Probably the biggest one has to be the fact that there are just too many games which pretty much do the same now. Apart from Underlords, we have Riot Games’ Teamfight Tactics and the OG Auto Chess from Drodo Studios. This means that the audience for those types of games is split in three, and, since the autobattlers are difficult to master, most people tend to play only one and leave the others behind.

Many people predicted that autobattlers will take over the world. However, this is definitely not the case right now. We can only hope that this new genre of games will remain relevant long enough for it to become an esport.